May, 27 1999 The Hague, Netherlands -- In a historic announcement, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said on Thursday it has indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo, the first time an international court has charged a sitting head of state with such crimes.
The U.N. court's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, said arrest warrants have been issued for war crimes dating from the beginning of this year in Kosovo. If Milosevic can be brought to trial and is convicted, he would face a maximum life sentence.
An indictment of Milosevic had been widely expected with ethnic Albanians fleeing his brutal regime giving investigators detailed accounts of massacres, rapes and other atrocities since March, when thousands were forced to flee the ethnic purge.
The tribunal has said it has evidence of war crimes ``on a massive scale,'' and has issued repeated calls to the NATO allies involved in the 2-month-old air campaign to gather as much evidence as possible against the Yugoslav president and other authorities before the proof can be destroyed. The court has been under mounting pressure from human rights groups, politicians and others to indict top Yugoslav officials for their command responsibility in ordering atrocities against civilians in Kosovo or failing to prevent or punish subordinates for carrying them out. But today's indictment threw renewed diplomatic efforts into question, because Western envoys trying to mediate a peaceful settlement to the conflict must now face the awkward situation of negotiating with an indicted war crimes suspect.
"I do not approve of this initiative. It does not serve peace," France's interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, said today, criticizing the court for having a "pseudo-moral vision instead of a political one."
China said today it was "concerned about the effect such an action may have on efforts to advance a political resolution for the Kosovo question."
Yugoslav officials called the indictment a political ploy to justify the NATO airstrikes that began March 24. The allied air campaign started 13 months after Milosevic's forces cracked down on ethnic Albanians, killing at least 2,000 people in Kosovo, a southern Serb province. "This court for us does not exist," Branko Brankovic, Yugoslavia's chief envoy to the United Nations' European headquarters, said to in Geneva. "This so-called indictment is, I think, the last attempt by the NATO countries to avoid what is obviously inevitable -- and that's a total collapse of the policy of aggression by NATO."
The tribunal was expected to deliver the arrest warrants to the Yugoslav Embassy at The Hague. But that doesn't mean Milosevic will be arrested because Yugoslavia has refused to detain or hand over war crimes suspects. Many officials indicted by the tribunal as war criminals in Bosnia have eluded arrest, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, who have remained free since their 1995 indictments.
The tribunal has been forced to rely largely on eyewitness accounts from refugees who have fled to neighboring Macedonia and Albania because Belgrade authorities repeatedly have refused to let Arbour or her deputies enter Kosovo. The tribunal has pressed hard in recent weeks to gather as much evidence as possible, fearing that Milosevic's forces may be destroying it to cover their tracks. Belgrade authorities repeatedly have refused to allow Arbour or her top deputies and investigators to enter the region to examine the sites of alleged massacres and to interview witnesses. And NATO, preoccupied with its bombing campaign, has been slow to respond to the tribunal's calls for help in gathering evidence to prepare an airtight case. Even so, tribunal spokesman Paul Risley said the court has compiled a file so large that "the challenge is not to receive the information but to determine which areas to focus on, to zero in on."
There had been speculation that a negotiated settlement to end the war could include a deal providing Milosevic with at least limited immunity from prosecution for war crimes. However, the tribunal -- whose charter calls for complete independence -- has always vowed to follow the chain of command to the top, and Arbour is known for ignoring the political consequences of indictments.
On Monday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling for the "vigorous investigation" of genocide and other war crimes in Kosovo. It urged the tribunal to issue indictments "regardless of their position within the Serbian leadership.
